Is Matthew Hooton the biggest wrecker of NZ business

by Cameron Slater on December 2, 2013 at 10:30am

Chorus is in terrible mainly as a result of a collection of moaners and mingers under the control of political svengali Matthew Hooton.

What baffles me is that they have not fought back in way other than traditional corporate PR. Once they are crippled and bleeding and investors have lost millions of dollars, more than the millions have lost already as a result of Matthew Hooton’s merry band of corporate wreckers you will be able to use Chorus as an example of corporate PR failure in not fighting back.

They should have had huge billboards up around NZ saying “The future is fibre” and invested big time in ways to get their message out through all available channels. Instead they have been sodomised by a group of vested interests given a free rein in the complicit media.

Chorus has allowed them selves to become the Mark Hotchin/Hanover of the corporate world where all media outlets seem free to give them a kick in the guts. They are a media punching bag.

But the implications of Matthew Hooton’s corporate destruction is far wider than that.

There is no way the government is going to get Genesis away at a decent price now.

Brokers are looking at Chorus, Meridian, Mighty River and are drawing the conclusion that if the government can touch it, the government can molest it.

By government, I mean all facets of government like the Commerce Commission and Opposition Party policies.

National will either have to accept a huge discount on the price of Genesis, or accept the asset sale program is at a premature end. This will be huge egg on their faces. For John Key, for Bill English and for Steven Joyce.

Already the left are circling over the Genesis board – Jenny Shipley is the obvious target given her politics and the Mainzeal/Richina connection. This is all blatantly unfair – she’s a class act in my books but the left don’t care. They will attack and call it crony capitalism…their catch cry at the moment. They know it works, their focus groups say so.

What this all means ultimately is that if Winston is the coalition partner in 2014 onwards, Genesis is not going to be sold at all.

When you have corporate wreckers like Matthew Hooton carousing his way through corporate New Zealand like a home-wrecking hussy lining up drunk husbands why would you even bother investing?

When Chorus collapses and the fibre rollout halts you will all know who to blame…it will be Matthew Hooton. The sad part is everyone will blame the government and that will be the end of that nice man John Key and his whizz kids Bill and Steven. Matthew Hooton will have wrecked not only corporate New Zealand but also a government.

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As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. And when he’s not creating the news, he tends to be in it, with protagonists using the courts, media and social media to deliver financial as well as death threats.

They say that news is something that someone, somewhere, wants kept quiet. Cam Slater doesn’t do quiet, and as a result he is a polarising, controversial but highly effective journalist that takes no prisoners.